DRC: ten years after its publication, the autopsy of the Mapping report
DRC army soldiers on patrol in Eringeti, in the east of the country (illustration image).
ALAIN WANDIMOYI / AFP
Text by: Sonia Rolley Follow
24 mins
Ten years ago to the day, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights published its Mapping report on the most serious crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between 1993 and 2003. This unprecedented investigation was to end more than a decade of impunity.
But since then, none of these crimes has been tried and its recommendations remain a dead letter, which is being denounced by more and more voices in Congo, like Doctor Denis Mukwege, Nobel Peace Prize 2018.
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“
The discovery by the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo of three mass graves in North Kivu at the end of 2005 was a painful reminder that serious human rights violations committed in the past in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) remained largely unpunished and little investigated
”, we can read in the first lines of the Mapping report published on October 1, 2010 on the website
of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. man
.
This project mobilized more than twenty independent investigators who, for almost a year, listed 617 "incidents" in chronological order and by province, war crimes, crimes against humanity and possible crimes of genocide committed between 1993 and 2003. This period covers the two Congo wars which involved up to nine foreign armies and from which most of the Congolese political class still comes today.
►Also read: the 2010 UN Mapping Report
Official UN history has erased all reference to the exact circumstances of these gruesome discoveries.
In September 2005, Colonel She Kasikila and his men were deployed in Rutshuru, on the border with Rwanda.
These are among the first elements of the new Congolese armed forces of the DRC (FARDC) which were to gradually replace the units from the ex-Forces Armées du Zaire (FAZ) and the various rebellions that bloodied the east of the country.
"
It was a little moment of hope,
" recalls one of the investigators of the Mapping report.
“
For the first time, the territory of Rutshuru was liberated from the former rebels.
There were scenes of jubilation when they left and when Kasikila arrived, the population for the first time began to speak out without fear of reprisal.
"
With the agreement of Joseph Kabila
The inhabitants of Rutshuru bear witness, among other things, to terrible massacres in 1996 and above all indicate to She Kasikila the location of certain mass graves, which the commander of the very young 5th Brigade hastens to announce.
For several months, under the dumbfounded eyes of the press, Colonel Kasikila accuses the worst Rwandan military crimes and former rebels of Laurent-Désiré Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL).
His son and former part of this rebellion, Joseph Kabila, was however already President of the Republic.
He is a candidate for his succession and presented as one of the favorites to one year of elections organized by the United Nations to end a too long transition and turn the page on more than a decade of wars.
Our idea was to document what had happened.
Mapping Report: Scott Campbell, Head of the Africa Division of OHCHR
Sonia rolley
The enchanted parenthesis is short-lived.
Colonel Kasikila falls into several ambushes attributed to those he denounces and ends up being silent.
A year after his first statements, he even lost command of his brigade.
For ten years, She Kasikila will remain unassigned in Kinshasa.
Although belligerent, Joseph Kabila accepts the Mapping project.
A few months after his contested election, in May 2007, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the former prosecutor Louise Arbor, came to present him to the young head of state and ask for his support.
“
We were all surprised when she told us he had said yes,
” says a member of her team.
“
Joseph Kabila had just been elected under difficult conditions, he still needed support.
But perhaps he had not understood the scope of the project
?
"
Joseph Kabila, then Congolese president, during a press conference, January 26, 2018, in Kinshasa.
REUTERS / Kenny Katombe
"
Without the courageous and remarkable work of Congolese NGOs
"
The Congolese president and former warlord keeps his word and the investigators of the Mapping project know no obstacle in their work.
They are also surprised after having inherited archives from previous UN fact-finding missions which show how difficult the task can be.
"
There was the report of Robert Gersony's investigative team on the massacres of Rwandan Hutus which ended up in a drawer,
" one of them confides.
"
We had the entire archives of the 1996 and 1997 commission which had to interrupt its work because of threats, some members had even been detained
", explains another.
“
But they had already been able to do an extraordinary job.
I remember hand-made maps which located the main mass graves in South Kivu
”.
This is not the only treasure that the Mapping team unearths.
More than 1,500 documents relating to these crimes are consulted, proof that they were far from being unrecognized.
"
The strength of a mapping is first of all to compile existing information which is scattered and which once gathered can no longer be ignored
", underlines one of the members of the team.
However, this information is not easily accessible.
Among priests living in Canada, UN investigators uncover copies of dozens of reports from the African Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ASADHO) given as lost.
The office of this Congolese NGO had been attacked and looted several times, no doubt in the hope of removing traces of the crimes it reported.
"
Without the courageous and remarkable work of Congolese NGOs during these ten years, the Project would have had great difficulty in documenting the numerous violations committed
", readily admit the authors of the Mapping report.
More than 200 members of civil society, Congolese as well as international, were involved.
In less than a year, UN investigators have also managed to interview more than 1,280 witnesses to this violence.
“
We did not pretend to be carrying out a judicial investigation, but we wanted to provide Congolese and international justice with all the tools necessary to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes,
” recalls a member of the team.
“
We had even added to the report previous judgments and the texts of laws that could apply.
The experts appointed by the Office of the High Commissioner go so far as to imagine translating the report into local languages and disseminating it widely.
"
We had obtained money for that, it was imperative for us that the Congolese population appropriate it
", continues one of them.
“
For us, the UN buried this report on October 1 by simply posting it on its website.
"
Geneva vs. New York
Proof of the existence of tensions around its publication, including within the United Nations, a draft of the report was first disclosed to the press in August 2010. Among the countries implicated, Rwanda is undoubtedly the most virulent in its reaction.
It threatens to withdraw its 3,500 peacekeepers from Sudan, "
if the UN publishes its outrageous and damaging report,
" said a spokesman for the Rwandan army at the time.
The High Commission is not at its first showdown with the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, and knows that the latter has support in New York.
Since 2006, Louise Arbor had already had to fight against the appointment of General Karenzi Karake to the post of Deputy Commander of the UN force in Darfur.
Although accused by the United Nations of attacks against civilians, particularly in Kisangani in 2000, he will hold office for more than a year before being forced to resign in 2009. “
Louise Arbor was determined to do so. cleaning up in peacekeeping operations when New York cried for troops,
”said a UN source.
“
Whenever one of his officers is accused of crimes, Kagame threatens to withdraw his peacekeepers.
On the Mapping report and its use, Geneva and New York had to find a compromise.
In the departments of political affairs and peacekeeping operations, this was often seen as "
a leverage
".
For a former member of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “
the way in which the international community treats Rwanda is undoubtedly due to the bad conscience linked to its inaction during the genocide.
Since then, she has tolerated the crimes of Paul Kagame
”.
Former prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Louise Arbor "
did not have these kinds of considerations
".
The Mapping project team had however opted for a chronological presentation of the facts rather than by perpetrator.
“
We had the experience of mapping Afghanistan.
They had decided to do a chapter by author, it gave a table of contents with the United States, Russia, the Afghan forces and the Taliban and the report never came out.
"
Geneva is far from having lost everything in the battle.
Not only is the report published, but the Office of the High Commissioner obtains the sustainability of its resources in the DRC in the form of the Joint United Nations Office for Human Rights (UNJHRO), funded largely by New York and the establishment a policy of due diligence, aimed at preventing the perpetrators of the most serious crimes from benefiting from the UN system.
Possible crimes of genocide?
If Kigali is upset against the publication of this report, it is because its authors openly ask the question of "
the concomitant existence
" of the war crimes and crimes against humanity recorded in the DRC "
of certain acts which could be qualified as genocide
”.
"
The apparently systematic and widespread attacks described in this report
", they specify, "
targeted large numbers of Rwandan Hutu refugees as well as members of the Hutu (Congolese) civilian population and caused their deaths
".
Between 1996 and 1997, these investigators noted among the hundred massacres enumerated "
several overwhelming elements which, if proven in a competent court, could be qualified as crimes of genocide
".
People are falling like dead leaves.
Mapping report: Maurice Niwese, witness to violence in Congo
Sonia rolley
After the 1994 Tutsi genocide, two million Hutus found refuge in the Congo, among which were members of the former Rwandan Armed Forces and Interahamwe militias, accused of having participated in it.
"
It was a real mistake on the part of UNHCR to have allowed camps so close to the border to be militarized
," explains one of the members of the Mapping project team.
“
Kigali has long evoked the security argument and assured of targeting armed elements, but after a while, it no longer held up.
In Tingi Tingi, for example, all the men had fled, leaving the wounded, the elderly, women and children behind, and they were all slaughtered.
The investigator remembers trying to trace "on old maps", thousands of kilometers from the Kivus to Kisangani or Mbandaka.
“
All along the road there were massacres, big and small.
It's a manhunt.
All the Hutus who had not returned to Rwanda in 1996 were considered enemies to be killed.
"
Rwandan President Paul Kagame (photo illustration).
SIA KAMBOO / AFP
Despite the publication of the report, Kigali has never ceased to seek to discredit the survivors and witnesses of these massacres of Hutu refugees, accused of being genocidaires and deniers.
Any reference to the crimes committed by the Rwandan army in the Congo has always been strongly opposed.
Just recently, on September 6, 2020, President Paul Kagame referred to the Mapping report.
Asked about the crimes committed by the Rwandan army in Congo, the Rwandan head of state considered that "the authors of the Mapping report" took Rwanda as "scapegoat" to "hide their own involvement".
"
If they want us to make history, we will quickly realize that they themselves are more responsible in the tragedy than the Congo or Rwanda,
" added President Kagame.
For the Rwandan head of state, the "
authors
" of the Mapping report would seek to "
obtain the favors of the Congolese
" because they "
do not look favorably on the good relations that may exist between the two countries
".
I see thousands of people jumping into the water to escape bullets.
Mapping Report: Marie Umutesi, survivor of Tingi Tingi camp
Sonia rolley
The controversy surrounding the Kasika massacre
At the origin of the small sentence of the Rwandan head of state on the Mapping report, there is a controversy around a tweet from his new ambassador in the DRC, Vincent Karega.
In full commemoration of the massacres of Kasika and surrounding villages, on August 24, 2020, he denounces on Twitter the “
simplistic narrative
” which aims to point out the responsibility of the Rwandan army in these attacks against Congolese civilians, calling it “
slander
”.
"Or"
propaganda
".
His remarks provoke an unprecedented outcry, they are qualified as "negationist" by the citizen movements of the DRC which, since, launched a petition and demonstrated several times to demand the departure of the Rwandan diplomat.
These young Congolese oppose the conclusions of the Mapping report.
On August 24, 1998, according to the UN, the rebels of the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD) and their Rwandan military allies massacred more than a thousand Congolese civilians, including many women and children, in these southern villages. Kivu, presumably in retaliation for an ambush led by a May group against their troops.
"
Before being killed, most of the women were raped, tortured and suffered the mutilation of their genitals
", detail the investigators of the High Commission.
“
Many bodies of children and babies were thrown into the latrines.
"
An aggravating fact for Congolese civil society, the day after his remarks, Vincent Karega was received by Félix Tshisekedi to talk about bilateral cooperation and Paul Kagame's participation in a summit to be held in Goma.
Since the arrival in power of the new Congolese head of state, this cooperation has been further strengthened.
Although the two capitals deny it, Kigali has again been authorized to conduct operations with the FARDC against several Rwandan rebel groups on Congolese soil.
The Congolese presidency may well ensure that it took advantage of this meeting to "reframe" the Rwandan ambassador on his words, the indignation continues.
"
Imagine that one fine evening, the DRC ambassador stationed in Kigali tweeted questioning the veracity or the number of victims of the Bugesera massacre in 1994, and that the next day he was received with a red carpet and honors by President Kagame to talk about bilateral cooperation
”, denounced on this same social network activist Jean Mobert Senga, researcher at Amnesty International, who also documented these crimes.
Dr Denis Mukwege here at Panzi hospital, March 18, 2015. Marc JOURDIER / AFP
The wrath of doctor Mukwege
"
The fact that the Congolese people are standing up to ask that the government can take its responsibilities in relation to these crimes, it is very encouraging,
" said Dr. Denis Mukwege, Congolese gynecologist who "repairs" women raped since more than fifteen years in his native province of South Kivu.
On October 6, 1996, the hospital he runs, located in the town of Lemera, was attacked.
About thirty people, nursing staff, sick, civilians and soldiers alike, were massacred.
It is one of the very first crimes of the first Congo war.
“
There was not the right reaction and we can see the result today,
” continued Mr. Mukwege.
“
Killing patients in their beds is one of the most serious violations and today it tends to become widespread.
We are opening the door wide for this type of crime to continue.
"
►Also read: DRC: civil society demands the application of the recommendations of the Mapping report
Since 2018, the Congolese gynecologist has used his notoriety as a Nobel Peace Prize winner to seek justice for the crimes of the Mapping report.
He revived the idea of setting up an international criminal tribunal for the Congo.
At the beginning of September, he obtained from the European Parliament a motion of support for his proposal for an international criminal tribunal for the Congo.
On the eve of this tenth anniversary, he signed a platform with the former High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbor, calling for "to
break the cycle of violence and instability in eastern Congo
" attributed "
to the instigators of the most serious crimes
”.
“
Yesterday, it was small organizations and not so audible voices that demanded this justice,
” explains Gérard Kwigwasa, executive secretary of Héritiers de la justice, a Protestant organization based in South Kivu which contributed to the Mapping report.
“
But today, we have a renowned personality, a respected personality internally and internationally who relays this cry of alarm from the victims in the person of Dr. Mukwege.
"In the wake of the Nobel Peace Prize, there are not only" small organizations ": the Church of Christ in Congo (ECC, Protestant Church) has decided to launch a major campaign to popularize the crimes of the report Mapping to the population.
Even if for ten years, its recommendations have never been implemented, that there has been neither justice nor reconciliation, for Denis Mukwege, there is "a momentum" for the Mapping report.
The DRC is headed by a Head of State who "
has his hands clean in relation to all these serious human rights violations
" and who "
asked the government to work for the establishment of a of transitional justice
”.
The two decrees under consideration on the table of his coalition government no longer provide for a judicial component when a year earlier, Felix Tshisekedi still mentioned the idea of creating a "
special court
".
In 2014, the government tabled a more ambitious bill establishing mixed chambers, made up of Congolese and foreign judges and recommended by the Mapping report.
The text had been rejected at the level of the parliament, today still largely dominated by the coalition of the former head of state.
"
We must have a population that is committed to encourage the President of the Republic to move forward,
" insists Denis Mukwege.
“
I call on the Congolese people to demand that justice be done.
No one will do it for us
”.
►Also read: War crimes in the DRC: how to follow up on the Mapping report
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